


If Your Cup Be Empty

by curlyhairedhippie



Category: 18th Century CE RPF
Genre: Angst, but at the price of peoples lives, just a mother protecting her children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:20:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23488966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curlyhairedhippie/pseuds/curlyhairedhippie
Summary: Reflections of Marie Antoinette on the eve of the Revolution. Her children, her husband, her kingdom, her fate. One shot.
Kudos: 6





	If Your Cup Be Empty

Sometimes, in the early mornings, before the children awake and before her _levée_ , she rises, slips on a cloak, and walks by herself out to the road leading away from Versailles. She stares at it through the golden gates of the Sun King and imagines what it would be like to run, run into the mist that gathers at the side of the road on cool mornings like this and just keep going.

She wonders if she would see the sea. Her husband had seen the coast of his kingdom only once, when he visited a naval shipyard, and he hadn’t told her much of it. Perhaps they could all go someday, when things were more quiet. The children would like it, and the air would be good for the little _dauphin_. His health worried her more than ever as of late. Another thing to run from. 

She wants to run from the memory of her mother. The great empress, imposing even in death. She can still feel the shame of her mother’s letters to her from the early years of her marriage. A child she had been then, and a child she still feels now. Not an infant but a small child with just enough pluck and confidence to try and fail spectacularly. She had tried, she had given birth to a son, she had given her husband advice. And for what? Her son was dying and the kingdom was faltering. The people say it is her fault. 

_L’Autrichienne_. She knows what they say about her. The rumors of her and...everyone. Artois, Gabrielle, even dear, sweet Lamballe. She supposes she wants to run from that too. Her hands absentmindedly go to the trim on her cloak. Delicate lace, the loveliest in France. She wonders what the ultimate price of this finery will be.

A great gust of wind blows then, a sudden chill running through her body. She draws her cloak around her, and turns back towards her palace. Her palace. A foreigner they might think her, but had her grandmother not been born at Versailles? Though truth be told, she cares little about that, or any of it, anymore. All she knows is, this is where her children lay their heads to sleep at night. And she will fight for it.


End file.
